Women & Water

For Women’s History Month, we asked Lana Meador, Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, to highlight works by women artists currently on view at SAMA. Read on to learn more about Ningura Napurrula, Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga, and LaToya Frazier, then visit the Museum to see their work in person. 

Over the past several years, the Museum has increased its representation of women artists through acquisitions to the collection and special exhibitions. SAMA is, thankfully, not alone in this endeavor as institutions across the globe aim to correct centuries of under-recognition (to put it lightly). Recent exhibitions at SAMA such as Marilyn Lanfear: Material Memory (2018), Texas Women: A New History of Abstract Art (2020), and SAMA’s presentation of Wendy Red Star: A Scratch on the Earth (2022) along with new acquisitions of works by Laura Aguilar, Judy Gelles, and Wendy Red Star (all in 2022) supported this initiative and were an honor to shepherd as a curator. 

Several recent acquisitions are currently on view in the Contemporary II gallery including three outstanding works by women artists. The gallery’s theme is related to landscape, displaying works that explore human interaction with the natural world. Although the practices of LaToya Ruby Frazier, Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga, and Ningura Napurrula diverge greatly in their chosen processes and materials, the works are unified by their shared exploration of women’s experiences. Another connecting thread is the subject of water. Our life source, water, is perhaps the most persistent connection humanity has with the natural environment. In these works, the artists explore its significance, material qualities, and metaphorical potential.
 

Ningura Napurrula, Indigenous Australian, Pintupi language group, ca.1938–2013, Untitled, 2003, Acrylic on linen, 48 1/16 x 35 13/16 in. (122 x 91 cm), San Antonio Museum of Art, Gift of the Lam Family, 2016.14.65 © Ningura Napurrula

Ningura Napurrula: Untitled

Although seemingly abstract, Ningura Napurrula’s painting represents a long history of spiritual and artistic practices as well as a specific location in the Western Australian desert. Tjukurrpa, also referred to as the Dreaming, is the basis of many artworks produced by Indigenous Australian people. It is a worldview that connects all objects, lands, life forces, and beings and encompasses the Creation Period when Spirit Ancestors emerged from the earth, formed the landscape, and established all aspects of life. Napurrula’s compositions center on her ancestors’ journey to an important rockhole site at Wirrulnga. Rockholes are life-sustaining water sources in the desert and this locale, in particular, is associated with birth. Ancestral women traveled here during the Creation Period to give birth and conduct ceremony. The U-shapes comprised of concentric lines seen throughout the composition represent the landscape and human presence alike—these forms symbolize the Australian desert’s rocky outcrops and sandhills, as well as the ancestral women. Napurrula’s distinct palette and linear forms reference the practice of body painting on women’s breasts for ceremony in which skin is understood as a threshold between the physical and metaphysical realms. When white pigments are applied to dark skin, the design stands out and embodies the spiritual power of Tjukurrpa. 

This concept is also relevant to the desert sand as a border between worlds. The practice of creating sand paintings by tracing designs with one’s fingers and utilizing rocks and other natural materials is an ancient method of artmaking and transmitting knowledge for many language groups in the desert regions. Beginning in the early 1970s, Indigenous Australians in the Western Desert translated the iconography of ephemeral sand paintings into the more enduring materials of acrylic on canvas. Next time you are in the gallery, view this painting from the side and you will discover the artist has layered black and white pigments on top of an earthy red ground, referencing both the history of sand painting and the landscape the work depicts. 

Napurrula’s painting is one of over a hundred works of contemporary Australian Aboriginal art gifted to SAMA by May and Victor Lam and their family. The collection was amassed by longtime Museum trustee May Lam and her daughter Dorothy who traveled to Australia and visited Aboriginal art centers and communities with renowned writer, art consultant, and curator Jennifer Isaacs AM. The Lam family’s transformative gift established SAMA as a major regional center in the study and display of contemporary Australian Aboriginal art. Notably, the collection features strong representation of women artists such as Napurrula.  

Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga, Kenyan, born 1960, Itooneryo - Entrances, 2013, Sheet metal and stainless steel wire, 88 1/2 × 55 1/4 in. (224.8 × 140.3 cm), San Antonio Museum of Art, Purchased with The Brown Foundation Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund and funds provided by Dr. Dacia Napier, 2021.18 © Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga

Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga: Itooneryo - Entrances

Naomi Wanjiku Gakunga’s hanging sculpture joined the collection in 2021 as part of an initiative to acquire works by San Antonio-based artists. Her work draws from traditional craft techniques—such as basket weaving, textile design, and crochet—that she transforms with the industrial materials of sheet metal and steel wire. Influenced by her upbringing in a small village in Central Kenya and the cultural practices of the Gikuyu tribe, Wanjiku Gakunga’s signature material is sheet metal, known as mabati in Swahili, which recalls the legacy of Mabati Women’s Groups that emerged in the 1960s. Working together and pooling resources, these women replaced the grass-thatched roofs of their homes with longer-lasting galvanized, corrugated metal. The new material allowed them to collect rainwater—rather than source it from afar and carry it back to the village—which provided time for them to pursue other interests and activities. Mabati was no longer just a building material, but a symbol of women’s empowerment. 

Wanjiku Gakunga’s process references this history by submerging rolls of mabati in water for periods of several months to oxidize the metal, creating rich tonal shifts and abstract patterns. Itoonyero – Entrances is a watershed work in Wanjiku Gakunga’s career as one of her first to employ sheet metal. Pre-cut folded pieces of mabati were flattened, then soaked in water outdoors in the backyard of her San Antonio home for a period of eight months allowing the materials to reflect the elements and weather patterns. Next, the artist applied lacquer to stop the oxidation process and cease the transformation of materials. Lastly, Wanjiku Gakunga sewed and crocheted the metal pieces together with steel wire to create a large quilt-like sculpture that is suspended from the wall on eight-inch brackets. 

In joining the seemingly disparate material of manufactured metal with the organic process of oxidation and the craft of sewing, Wanjiku Gakunga challenges what we often consider to be masculine/feminine, strong/delicate, or permanent/changing. The work’s title Itoonyero – Entrances and the inclusion of four sets of hinges in the composition suggests a transitional space such as a portal or doorway. Tapping into the symbolic potential of movement, Itoonyero – Entrances relates to the human experience and can evoke migration, a journey (physical or spiritual), or the life cycle. To learn more and hear from the artist, watch this short video produced by SAMA and Walley Films.

LaToya Ruby Frazier, American, born 1982, Flint is Family, 2016, Video (color, sound), 11 minutes 50 seconds, San Antonio Museum of Art, Purchased with the Brown Foundation Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund, 2020.11 © LaToya Ruby Frazier

LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint is Family 

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s video Flint is Family reveals the tension between natural and built environments, and the social systems that impact our lives. In this series, Frazier exposes the harsh reality affecting residents of Flint, Michigan, concerning access to clean water. The crisis began in 2014 when, to save money, the city of Flint stopped piping in drinking water from nearby Detroit and switched its supply to the Flint River. The waterway had long been contaminated by industrial waste, raw sewage, agricultural and urban runoff, and landfill leakage. Insufficient water treatment and negligence by government officials led to an ongoing, human-made public health crisis. In 2017, the Michigan Civil Rights Commission issued a report that identified decades of systemic racism affecting the majority Black community of Flint, which resulted in the water crisis. Motivated by social injustices like Flint, Frazier utilizes art as a tool for social change. Informed by documentary photography practice, her work tackles major issues including ecological disaster, the healthcare system, and industrial decline—always working collaboratively and advocating for others through the humanizing lens of individual experience.

The Flint is Family video is a compilation of photographic images from a series of the same name produced over a five-month period when Frazier immersed herself in the Flint community. During that time, she documented the water crisis and its effects through the experience of three generations of women in the Cobb family. The images were initially published as a photo essay in Elle magazine, bringing awareness to the crisis and bearing witness to the lives of Flint residents. The voice on the video is that of Shea Cobb—a bus driver, coach, singer, songwriter, poet, activist, and mother. Shea begins by delivering a powerful spoken word poem titled “No Filter” in which she eloquently responds to the tragedy plaguing her community. She goes on to describe daily activities with her daughter Zion—such as brushing their teeth, attending school, and cooking dinner—all impacted by the city’s toxic water supply. Importantly, the video prominently features Shea’s creative practice and her relationships with family and friends. By focusing the story on the Cobb family, as told in Shea’s words, Frazier honors individuals’ life experiences, accomplishments, and humanity rather than their trauma. As the screen pans across an image of Cobb women posing with the bride at a family wedding, Shea proclaims, “The women of Flint are strong. We’re here and you don’t get to get rid of us at the price of a dollar. We are Flint. We live, we love, we get married. The water crisis does not stop that. It doesn’t stop us from living.” 

To learn more about the Flint water crisis and Frazier’s involvement, watch her TED talk here.

Lana Meador
Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art